BlogRush
So, I set this blog up the other day in a fit of raveosity and, well, as I said, I’m busy doing something else right now so I don’t really have much time to do any promotion. I need minimal-effort traffic-gen methods right now…
First stop, therefore, was BlogRush, one of John Reese’s recent projects ( affiliate / direct ). It’s a cool little widget that you put in the sidebar of your blog and it shows headlines of the latest posts for other randomly rotated blogs in your genre. I use it on one of my other blogs—which I also quite shamefully neglect like a methadone-mum.
If you’re blogging and you haven’t tried it out, you should.
They have their own screening/acceptance process. I got on board right at the beginning so I was able to see the interesting way in which this screening/acceptance process came about.
Only about a week or so after it launched, Reese sent out an email saying that people were already trying to game the system. You see, it works on a sort of “credit” system (it’s completely free and I’m about to grossly simplify it!) in which your headlines get shown more as more people visit your site and view other people’s headlines in your widget.
Apparently it only took a couple of days for people to work out ways to try and fuck it over. Amazing innit? So I gets this email saying “Uh… look, there are more shady motherfuckers out there than we thought”… I’m paraphrasing here, John Reese doesn’t really send messages like that… “So, um, what we’ve done is put a Quality Control Review Panel in place to go through and manually approve every blog currently on the network as well as all the new sign-ups hereafter”.
Pretty neat stuff.
I’m not sure what the long term plan for this project is, but there MUST be some kind of monetization strategy planned for down the track or he wouldn’t be employing, like, university students in India or wherever to approve and reject blogs. No, hang on a minute…. he makes a jabillion dollars every year and those students aren’t so expensive… damn, if they didn’t speak English they’d be even cheaper… Hmmm… hang on… then they wouldn’t be able to check blogs… there’s a problem somewhere in that strategy…. if only I could see what it was… Point is he can afford it, right?
But I’m still skeptical. Stay tuned on whether or not that changes. Maybe he’s a swell guy doing great things for the IM community by providing this great service that no doubt costs a shit load for free (and that’s not being sarcastic, btw, I really do think it’s great!)
Nonetheless, I’m waiting for the monetization strategy.
So anyway I go to whack the BlogRush widget on this blog because it’s a PERFECT candidate for the current minimal-effort traffic-gen modus operandi… (yet not gaming the system, methinks… I mean, if I can get traffic from other IM blogs and those folks bookmark me and/or subscribe the the RSS feed then come back to read new posts, then the headlines from those other IM blogs are being shown in my sidebar)…
…but I got rejected!
This courteous note arrived in my email box yesterday:
We’re Very Sorry…
This message is to inform you that
we have carefully reviewed your blog:enough snake oil
http://www.enoughsnakeoil.net/rave-logAnd your blog did not meet the
strict BlogRush quality criteria.Reason Your Blog Wasn’t Approved:
Not Enough PostsTherefore, your blog has not
been approved for use in our
network.Please do not take this decision
personally. We have decided to
only approve the highest quality
blogs for our network.You should remove the BlogRush
code from your blog’s pages.* The BlogRush widget will no
longer appear on your blog.Our Quality Guidelines and
criteria are listed within our
Terms Of Service agreement:
http://www.blogrush.com/termsIf you improve the quality of
your blog, and you feel that
it then meets our strict criteria,
you can try and resubmit your
blog for review after 30 days –
anytime on or after this date:Friday, March 07, 2008
Thank you for your interest
in BlogRush.Best Regards,
The BlogRush Team
To the point and professional, huh?
Now, rather than cursing those SOBs, I was, actually, rather impressed!
Not only when they said they were going to review blogs and accept or reject them, they did it… but they also told me why, directed me to the terms (which most people naturally don’t bother to read), and set a 30 day minimum re-application period.
I think it’s awesome!
Sure, it means that I won’t get that traffic and I’ll have to get off my arse and do a bit of promo sooner rather than the later I was thinking of, but it reassures me that they really are doing what they say they’re doing—which is a lot more than can be said for scores of charlatans that I’ve had the displeasure of crossing paths with online (hence this site).
I was also going to write a little blah about BlogRush the other day, but I thought it might come across as some kind of sucky attempt to get my new blog accepted into the network when young Subramanian came a-visiting.
But now that they’ve said “Not good enough, pal” I’m actually even more impressed and strongly encourage you to check them out ( affiliate / direct ). They do stipulate that your widget has to be near the top of your sidebar so if you’ve got an established blog and you’ve got some good money-makers near the top and serious traffic, then you may not want to bother (you can always test how your CTR goes for those offers… it might actually go UP further down the page!)…
Anyway, that’s all for today. I had something to say about Reese, but I’ve forgotten what it was now so fuck it. Another day.
Be cool. Don’t get shafted,
